Bucharest strategy

The Bucharest strategy was a defensive plan created by Ion Antonescu during World War II. The Soviet Union's invasion of Romania in late 1944 revealed the weakness of the Romanian Army, so Antonescu decided that a sound plan would be to withdraw the poorly-equipped and inferior Romanian troops to defend Bucharest as a giant army. This abandoned the Wehrmacht armies and the allied orces of Bulgaria and Hungary in the north, and although the plan saved some Romanian forces from battle, it virtually surrendered northern and eastern Romania to the Allied Powers and led to the Romanians being encircled in the Bucharest Pocket at the capital; units that failed to withdraw in time were also surrounded and destroyed. The strategy led to the collapse of the Romanian front, and the Soviets took over almost the whole country by September.